Pragmatism

[Leela]

Okay, let’s speculate: People disagreed about what was true. They had trouble resolving their disputes. They wanted to get clear about what they meant by affirming the truth of a proposition. They assumed this might shed some light on their dispute and perhaps even help to resolve it. Presumably they always took their ‘theories’ of truth to be descriptive of truth (are you suggesting there is an alternative?).

How would you answer your questions?

I agree that people probably sought a theory of truth in the hope of settling disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself.

I don’t know what you’re referring to here - are you saying that the pragmatist’s adoption of a Tarski-style theory of truth is not supposed to help us resolve/clarify our disputes about what is true? So why do you adopt the theory?

I can’t see how it could settle any disputes about what is true.

Here’s a question I really wonder about: who are you talking about when you refer to these theorists of truth with theories that don’t do what they are supposed to do? Do you have a list to propose of the usual suspects? Please name just one, tell us his theory and what he took it to be capable of doing, and why it failed to do that. Maybe that will orient our discussion with a little concreteness so that we can think about the kind of argument that supposedly grounds your blanket dismissal (at least as a conversational starting-point) of ‘theories of truth’.

I don’t know any history. I’m just saying that I don’t know why someone would try to pursue a theory of truth other than for the reason you suggested–that we want to be able to settle disputes about what is true. I am doubting that any proposed theory of truth is good for settling disputes about what is true. Since I see this as the reason someone would pursue a theory of truth to begin with, it seems off to me to call something that doesn’t do what a theory of truth is supposed to do a “theory of truth.”

When I say that I do not have a theory of truth to offer, I am saying that I don’t see myself as claiming to have a single sure-fire method of settling disputes about what is true. There are lots of ways we try to get consensus on beliefs, and appealing to a theory of truth to settle the issue for us isn’t one of them.

If correspondence or coherence or Tarski’s disquotational model or James’s pragmatism are thought of as theories of truth, then they are all bad ones since none of them perform well the function that theories of truth are pursued to do, i.e. settle disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself.

I read James as suggesting a method for settling philosophical disputes by considering the consequences of holding various beliefs in practice rather than by characterizing truth itself.

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

Here’s a question I really wonder about: who are you talking about when you refer to these theorists of truth with theories that don’t do what they are supposed to do? Do you have a list to propose of the usual suspects? Please name just one, tell us his theory and what he took it to be capable of doing, and why it failed to do that. Maybe that will orient our discussion with a little concreteness so that we can think about the kind of argument that supposedly grounds your blanket dismissal (at least as a ‘conversational starting-point’) of ‘theories of truth’.

Can you use the word ‘true’ properly in sentences? Some sentences, sure, we’ll of course grant you that - but that’s true of anyone. (How does pragmatism help us to see that?) But the question here is whether you use it properly in sentences involving theories of truth. Your deflationary position seems to suggest that you think (1) that there is obviously no point in thinking about the obvious polysemy associated with the use of the word ‘true’ and (2) that the limits you propose regarding what we can legitimately think of as the ‘useful’ ways of using the concept are a fairly obvious result of examining the fairly obvious failure of the philosophical tradition (which you only ever refer to in general terms that don’t refer to anything or anyone in particular), as compared to the obvious success of our conversational (which you inexplicably seem to continue to equate with ‘practical’) use of ‘true’ confused. Can you see why this is problematic? Can you see that you’re begging questions rather willy-nilly?

I agree that people probably sought a theory of truth in the hope of settling disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself.I don’t know any history. I’m just saying that I don’t know why someone would try to pursue a theory of truth other than for the reason you suggested–that we want to be able to settle disputes about what is true. I am doubting that any proposed theory of truth is good for settling disputes about what is true. Since I see this as the reason someone would pursue a theory of truth to begin with, it seems off to me to call something that doesn’t do what a theory of truth is supposed to do a “theory of truth.”

This is precisely the problem, Leela. You can’t give any concrete example of what you are charging past philosophers of doing that failed so terribly, and how that makes pragmatism any different. Past philosophers perceived no difference between “seeking for the truth” and “seeking for what is true.” So how is this any different than how a pragmatist would approach scientific/philosophical questions? I don’t think Betterave and I see how any other current philosophical/scientific theory proposes to be any *more *a theory about the world and less a theory about the Truth than Platonic metaphysics proposes to be *more *a theory about the world and less a theory about the Truth either. So, how exactly is pragmatism any less a theory about truth than these other theories of old? You are not drawing any concrete or principled distinctions here. Like I said, theories about the truth itself did not come along until the 20th century.

As for this topic: would you please answer my questions in that previous post with regard to this subject? I have the exact same question as Betterave: he asks, “who are you talking about when you refer to these theorists of truth with theories that don’t do what they are supposed to do? Do you have a list to propose of the usual suspects? Please name just one, tell us his theory and what he took it to be capable of doing, and why it failed to do that. Maybe that will orient our discussion with a little concreteness so that we can think about the kind of argument that supposedly grounds your blanket dismissal (at least as a ‘conversational starting-point’) of ‘theories of truth’.”

 

[Leela]

This is precisely the problem, Leela. You can’t give any concrete example of what you are charging past philosophers of doing that failed so terribly, and how that makes pragmatism any different. Past philosophers perceived no difference between “seeking for the truth” and “seeking for what is true.” So how is this any different than how a pragmatist would approach scientific/philosophical questions? I don’t think Betterave and I see how any other current philosophical/scientific theory proposes to be any *more *a theory about the world and less a theory about the Truth than Platonic metaphysics proposes to be *more *a theory about the world and less a theory about the Truth either. So, how exactly is pragmatism any less a theory about truth than these other theories of old? You are not drawing any concrete or principled distinctions here. Like I said, theories about the truth itself did not come along until the 20th century.

As for this topic: would you please answer my questions in that previous post with regard to this subject? I have the exact same question as Betterave: he asks, “who are you talking about when you refer to these theorists of truth with theories that don’t do what they are supposed to do? Do you have a list to propose of the usual suspects? Please name just one, tell us his theory and what he took it to be capable of doing, and why it failed to do that. Maybe that will orient our discussion with a little concreteness so that we can think about the kind of argument that supposedly grounds your blanket dismissal (at least as a ‘conversational starting-point’) of ‘theories of truth’.”

But I have answered all these questions. I’m not philosophologist. I don’t know about any particular philosophers of the past and what their stated goals were. I don’t have a criticism to offer any particular philosophers. That question is irrelevant because reagardless of what the stated goals of philosphers who concerned themselves with theories of truth were, I can’t see why anyone would seek a theory of truth for any reason other than trying to find a method for settling disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself or by clarifying what it means to say that something is true.

I think that the classical pragmatists did want to settle disputes as well. In fact, that was their stated goal, but they hoped to accomplish it not by characterizing truth but by characterizing belief. That statement may actually not be all that historically accurate about the classical pragmatists. Dewey did think he had a theory of truth on his hands but later in his career seemed to realize the problem with saying so and started just talking about “warranted assertibility.” Rorty (and I) wants to read the classical pragmatists as not having a theory of truth to offer because they never should have said that they did have a theory of truth. Rorty is content to say “truth is truth” and leave it at that, because he didn’t think we are ever going to be able to come up with a method and say anything about truth that will settle disputes for us about which assertions are true.

The way to convince me that I really do have a theory of truth is to convince me that my way of thinking about truth actually does settle some disputes about what is true. That may actually even be true. But the sorts of disputes my conception settles seems unworthy to me of the label “theory of truth.” If you want to call it that, fine. If that’s all you think a theory of truth needs to do to warrant that label, then call it that. For me it seems like a stretch and a mischaracterization of Rorty’s pragmatism to say that he was in search of such a method or thought he wielded such a method for settling disputes.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

You’re certainly free to say that, but not if you want to be consistent with what contextualism actually says. The evaluative term “superior” is a judgment independent of context since it implies you are appealing to some standard outside of the contextually dependent justificatory activities of both the child and the adult.

I wouldn’t say that I am appealing to a standard that stands outside of any context, but I would say that I think that there is can be truth to the matter of whether the justificatory practices available within one context are better than the justifcatory practices available in another context. In making that claim, I admit that I have no way of standing outside of my own context to settle the matter as to which justificatory practice is really better. I don’t claim that there is an ideal context (I think Pierce or Putnam might?) because even if there were such a context I couldn’t claim access to such an external standard.

I do admit, however, that the comparison suggested in saying that one perspective is better than another can only be made from some third perspective that is superior to the other two in question (assuming we disallow perspectiveless perspectives or ideal contexts). But if the comparison includes comparing our own context to another context we seem to be in some real trouble. This is your complaint, right? We don’t have anywhere to stand to make the comparison.

My claim is that we get something like this needed superior third perspective in reflecting on our own perspective. Though we have no way to stand outside of our own finite historically situated perspective, we also don’t have to take our perspectives for granted as final. We can question the assumptions that have been handed to us by tradition, and we can doubt any of our own beliefs. We can’t, unfortunately, call all of our assumptions and beliefs into question at once (we would need some way of stepping outside of history to do that), but we can call certain assumptions and sets of assumptions into question while maintaining others. There is no assumption that we currently hold–no aspect of our historically situated perspective–that cannot be called into question. I think that the fact that we can reflect on our own perspectives offers us less than a “perspectiveless perspective” but still puts us in a far better position than the “anything goes” view of standards for justification that pragmatists get acused of.

It is clear you don’t understand this view.

I’m working on it! And I appreciate your help.

Epistemic contextualism says there is simply no empistemic standard outside of the very standards that are dependent on context. A non-contextualist will admit there are some standards that are dependent on context (such as mathematical truths dependent on logical standards and not empirical standards which cite evidence as a criterion of justfication), but **not all **standards are dependent on context. It is crucial that you get this distinction correct.

I hope I showed a better understanding of what epistemic contextualism means, but I think that part of he issue is really about a disagreement as to the consequences of epistemic contextualism rather than a misunderstanding about what it is.

I don’t think there is a contradiction between epistemic contextualism and asserting that one perspective is really better than another perspective. That judgment can only be made from within some context–a still better perspective.

Also, can you give an example of a standard for justification that does not depend on any context?

Thanks for your patience.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Please read my last paragraph again. I sat here just now modifying it to draw out the distinction further to assist your understanding. Thanks.

Honestly, I am not sure where I stand yet. I may or may not be thoroughly contextualist with respect to epistemic justification. But I will say that I am not, by any means, contextualist with respect to *moral *justification.

This distinction seems to me to rely on a fact/value dichotomy that I thought you denied. Can you explain which sorts of assertions are moral and have an outside standard for what ought to count as good justification and which sorts may not have such a standard?

By the way, I just started reading Putnam’s book on the subject.

 

[Syntax]

But I have answered all these questions. I’m not philosophologist. I don’t know about any particular philosophers of the past and what their stated goals were. I don’t have a criticism to offer any particular philosophers. That question is irrelevant because reagardless of what the stated goals of philosphers who concerned themselves with theories of truth were, I can’t see why anyone would seek a theory of truth for any reason other than trying to find a method for settling disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself or by clarifying what it means to say that something is true.

I think that the classical pragmatists did want to settle disputes as well. In fact, that was their stated goal, but they hoped to accomplish it not by characterizing truth but by characterizing belief. That statement may actually not be all that historically accurate about the classical pragmatists. Dewey did think he had a theory of truth on his hands but later in his career seemed to realize the problem with saying so and started just talking about “warranted assertibility.” Rorty (and I) wants to read the classical pragmatists as not having a theory of truth to offer because they never should have said that they did have a theory of truth. Rorty is content to say “truth is truth” and leave it at that, because he didn’t think we are ever going to be able to come up with a method and say anything about truth that will settle disputes for us about which assertions are true.

The way to convince me that I really do have a theory of truth is to convince me that my way of thinking about truth actually does settle some disputes about what is true. That may actually even be true. But the sorts of disputes my conception settles seems unworthy to me of the label “theory of truth.” If you want to call it that, fine. If that’s all you think a theory of truth needs to do to warrant that label, then call it that. For me it seems like a stretch and a mischaracterization of Rorty’s pragmatism to say that he was in search of such a method or thought he wielded such a method for settling disputes.

Let me try to understand your claims in the form of a *modus tollens *argument:

(1) If a set of ideas is a theory of truth, then it settles the dispute about what is true. .
(2) None of Rorty’s ideas succeed in settling disputes about what is true.
(3) Therefore, Rorty’s pragmatism is not a theory of truth.

But how is this any different than,

(1) If a set of ideas is a theory of truth, then it settles the dispute about what is true.
(4) None of the older philosophers succeeded in settling disputes about what is true.
(5) Therefore, older philosophers ideas are not theories of truth.

Why is (3) any more plausible than (5)? Both arguments are equally valid and sound.
If you claim that the only relevant difference between pragmatists and philosophers of old is that philosophers of old *intended *to offer theories of truth, while pragmatists did not, so what? Does one’s intention alone that his or her philosophical theory be a theory of truth, make one’s theory be the kind of theory that is about truth? I don’t think so, since the theory is going to stand apart from one’s intentions. So the question remains, “What does a theory of truth look like”?

Therefore, without telling us what a theory of truth consists in or looks like in the first place, you can’t reasonably insist that there is any plausible distinction between (3) and (5) at all.

From your previous post…

I don’t equate truth with whatever people take to be true but with whatever actually is so.

This is the correspondance theory of truth. Do you realize that?

truth=what is, in fact, the case.

All philosophers of old implicitly held the same thing as a presupposition in all their inquiries, but never really articulated the notion at all. Therefore, no philosopher ever *articulated *a theory of truth. So your accusation that philosophers of old articulated theories of truth is false.

 

[Syntax]

This distinction seems to me to rely on a fact/value dichotomy that I thought you denied. Can you explain which sorts of assertions are moral and have an outside standard for what ought to count as good justification and which sorts may not have such a standard?.

I don’t deny fact/value dichotomies. I don’t know what your accusation is here. Moral justification is not the same as epistmeic justification. The latter consists of specifying “reasons for believing X.” The former specifies “reasons for doing X.” And both activities are *normative * activites in practice.

 

[Syntax]

I hope I showed a better understanding of what epistemic contextualism means, but I think that part of he issue is really about a disagreement as to the consequences of epistemic contextualism rather than a misunderstanding about what it is.

Unfortunately, I think you still misunderstand it. It seems you continue to think “contextual justification” means “contextual reasons for believing X.” But this isn’t right. Here is some further explication: for example, take identical contexts, identical evidence, and identical beliefs. Here’s the difference:

Contextualism doesn’t say we are justified in believing X given context Z because of reason (or evidence) Y is found in context Z. This statement would be compatible with contextualism and non-contextualism. Rather, contextualism says: we are justified in believing X given reason (or evidence) Y because of reason Y and because of context Z.

These are very different claims. The “because” in both statements is epistemic, but in the first case the “because” is offered by the reason (or evidence) given the context. In the latter case the “because” is offered by the context, given the evidence. So the first says that this evidence is both necessary and sufficient for justifiably believing X irrespective of the context Z. And the latter says that the evidence is necessary but not sufficient for being justified in believing X. Only the context *together with *the reason provides sufficent justification in the latter case. I suggest contemplating what that Matrix example I gave is really saying with respect to this here.

I wouldn’t say that I am appealing to a standard that stands outside of any context, but I would say that I think that there is can be truth to the matter of whether the justificatory practices available within one context are better than the justifcatory practices available in another context. In making that claim, I admit that I have no way of standing outside of my own context to settle the matter as to which justificatory practice is really better. I don’t claim that there is an ideal context (I think Pierce or Putnam might?) because even if there were such a context I couldn’t claim access to such an external standard.

So I take it that you believe there is a fact of the matter about which standards are superior, but that you don’t know or have any epistemic access to which ones, in fact, are superior? I am not so sure I agree with the latter half. I think the whole enterprise of thinking up thought experiments about ideal situations (Putnam’s task) helps us know which justificatory principles are, in fact, axiomatically justificatory non-contextually. The idea of coming up with ideal situations consists of basically stripping all variables in order to arrive at the bare essence of justification common to all justificatory practice. Whereas a contextualist might stop short with variable contextually-dependent justification, Putnam, I would think, would not stop short since he would further try to find the justificatory element common to different contexts. I imagine this task is not an easy task at all, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The task, it seems, would involve going to 2nd- and 3rd-order levels of justification to solve the problem. So I sympathize with Putnam’s efforts.

I do admit, however, that the comparison suggested in saying that one perspective is better than another can only be made from some third perspective that is superior to the other two in question (assuming we disallow perspectiveless perspectives or ideal contexts). But if the comparison includes comparing our own context to another context we seem to be in some real trouble. This is your complaint, right? We don’t have anywhere to stand to make the comparison.

I guess that sounds right. The main problem is that, if contextualism is true, then appealing to contextually-independent contexts cannot, in principle, be done since all justification is contextually dependent. So matter how hard you try to get achieve a perspectiveless perspective, in the end, the perspectiveless perspective is just another perspective…something like that.

My claim is that we get something like this needed superior third perspective in reflecting on our own perspective. Though we have no way to stand outside of our own finite historically situated perspective, we also don’t have to take our perspectives for granted as final. We can question the assumptions that have been handed to us by tradition, and we can doubt any of our own beliefs. We can’t, unfortunately, call all of our assumptions and beliefs into question at once (we would need some way of stepping outside of history to do that), but we can call certain assumptions and sets of assumptions into question while maintaining others. There is no assumption that we currently hold–no aspect of our historically situated perspective–that cannot be called into question. I think that the fact that we can reflect on our own perspectives offers us less than a “perspectiveless perspective” but still puts us in a far better position than the “anything goes” view of standards for justification that pragmatists get acused of.

The process or development from inferior to superior forms of justification, here, such that we evaluate our current epistemic activities in relation to those of old, is not a contextualist kind of enterprise, Leela. This is exactly what Putnam would do. It’s a non-contextual activity since it presupposes that there exists a form of justification that we can discover superior to those of old. So by engaging in this very activity, we are assuming that contextualism is, in fact, false.

 

[Leela]

The process or development from inferior to superior forms of justification, here, such that we evaluate our current epistemic activities in relation to those of old, is not a contextualist kind of enterprise, Leela. This is exactly what Putnam would do. It’s a non-contextual activity since it presupposes that there exists a form of justification that we can discover superior to those of old. So by engaging in this very activity, we are assuming that contextualism is, in fact, false.

As you know, I still don’t really get it and will read back and keep trying, but the concept may just be over my head.

I’m trying to remember how we got into this discussion about epistemic contectualism and why it seemed important to resolve. I think it had to do with your claim that Rorty was a relativist because he saw no nonconversation constraints on justification. The bit I described about calling any of our assumptions into question while standing on some of them comes from Stout rather than Rorty. I never read Rorty making any such argument, but I don’t see such an argument as impossible for Rortyian pragmatism since such doubting of our current beliefs is possible to view as one of his conversational sorts of constraints on justification.

I find Jeffrey Stout interesting in his “modest” form of pragmatism in part because he does a good job as a Rorty apologist and critic. His claim that Rorty is prone to “pithy little slogans” where he is usually right about what he is implicitly denying but wrong about what he is explicitly asserting is helpful for me in my reading of Rorty. Other times I find him just being nit-picky about Rorty without shedding much light.

Rorty probably never did adequately explain a view of 2nd order justification (as I’m coming to understand it) that avoids relativism because he thought that if he can get people to stop asking “is our current knowledge adequate to the way things really are?” then we wouldn’t bother asking “is it objective or subjective?” or “is it absolute or relative?” He thought his arguments for denying the subject-object picture were such that anyone who followed him in his denial would never think to accuse anyone of relativism, and he just didn’t have any arguments regarding relativism for those who would not follow him in his suggestion of dropping the notion of mind as “mirror of nature.”

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

Rorty probably never did adequately explain a view of 2nd order justification (as I’m coming to understand it) that avoids relativism because he thought that if he can get people to stop asking “is our current knowledge adequate to the way things really are?” then we wouldn’t bother asking “is it objective or subjective?” or “is it absolute or relative?”

This is my problem with it: the proposal that we should stop asking whether our current knowledge is adequate to the way things are is self-defeatist. But why must we stop asking this question? Is there any argument? Where does this “should” come from? That what is true is not epistemically guiding? Of course what is true is epistemically guiding. 2+2=4 is true. And its truth is epistemically guiding when I put together 2 oranges and 2 oranges and say “ah ha! There are now 4 oranges in front of me.” And then I say, “I am justified in believing there are now 4 oranges in front of me because ‘2+2=4’ is true and because I see 2 oranges here and 2 oranges there.”

If knowledge is justified, true, belief, then “true” means our knowledge has something to do with the way things actually are. But if “true” does not mean knowledge has anything to do with the way things actually are, then what the heck does “knowledge” even mean? “Knowledge” doesn’t only mean justified belief; it means justified true belief. So without specifying the meaning of “true” as the way things really are, there’s no sense in hoping we can make sense of what “knowledge” means.

He thought his arguments for denying the subject-object picture were such that anyone who followed him in his denial would never think to accuse anyone of relativism, and he just didn’t have any arguments regarding relativism for those who would not follow him in his suggestion of dropping the notion of mind as “mirror of nature.”

If the mind does not mirror nature at all, we should all be skeptics. If the mind does mirror nature in some respect, then we can be hopeful. But if we drop the question all together, our epistemic activities will lose their purpose of having anything to do with the hope of finding out how things really are since the question of “what is nature really like?” has just been dropped.

 

[Betterave]

I agree that people probably sought a theory of truth in the hope of settling disputes about what is true by characterizing truth itself.

…and then they realized the question about truth was itself fundamental and interesting!

I can’t see how it could settle any disputes about what is true.

I think Syntax’s neat little modus tollens argument was spot on in response to this comment.

I don’t know any history. I’m just saying that I don’t know why someone would try to pursue a theory of truth other than for the reason you suggested–that we want to be able to settle disputes about what is true. I am doubting that any proposed theory of truth is good for settling disputes about what is true. Since I see this as the reason someone would pursue a theory of truth to begin with, it seems off to me to call something that doesn’t do what a theory of truth is supposed to do a “theory of truth.”

The history of ideas is full of attempts to understand something for some reason and something unintended but interesting and valuable grows out of it. Don’t you agree? You are caught up in speculations about theories of truth whether you like it or not, and whether you admit it or not. If you want you can drop those speculations altogether, but if you prefer not to do that, then you should commit yourself to not making uninformed and false claims. That is part of the practice of trying to saying true things and you should make it part of your theory of truth: the truth (yes - even the truth about truth) is not found by means of blind speculation.

 

[Leela]

Let me try to understand your claims in the form of a *modus tollens *argument:

(1) If a set of ideas is a theory of truth, then it settles the dispute about what is true. .
(2) None of Rorty’s ideas succeed in settling disputes about what is true.
(3) Therefore, Rorty’s pragmatism is not a theory of truth.

(1) For a pragmatist, a theory is only ever pursued in the service of some practice, otherwise having a theory or not is a difference that makes no difference. The meaning of a theory of truth is understood pragmatically as the difference between the habits of action of one holding to this theory as compared to others who do not hold this theory.

(2) A theory of truth is an attempt to definitively characterize truth.

(3) The only non-theoretical practices that Rorty could think of that a theory of truth could serve are settling disputes about what is true.and helping us say new true things.

(4) Rorty doubts that we can do much in the way of settling disputes about what assertions are true or helping us say more true things by definitively characterizing truth. This is a moral he drew from the history of philosophy and the lack of fruits for previous attempts for (2).

(5) Therefore, he didn’t see the need to personally pursue finding the one true account of what it means to say that something is true. In other words, he didn’t pursue or promote any particular theory of truth.

(6) Instead Rorty thought that the history of philosophy suggests that perhaps the most we can get out the project of characterizing truth is whatever agreement about which statements are true that we can get out of such boring statements as “‘P’ is true iff P.” If so, such a theory of truth or other deflationary notion will do very little for the hope of settling disputes about what is true or helping us to say new true things.

(7) Given (1), if Rorty were to trumpet and promote (6) as his theory of truth that everyone ought to adopt, he would be in an uncomfortable situation as a pragmatist since to adopt such a theory would not be to have something we do not already have.

(8) Therefore, he found it better to say that he had no theory of truth to offer, only a suggestion that we move on to some other more promising philosophical territory.

For example, instead of asking what it means to say that P is true, let’s ask how we can be justified in believing that P. I suppose that you will say that the second question can not be answered without already having and answer to the first question, so if Rorty thinks he can work on the second question he must be implicitly claiming to have a theory of truth that others ought to adopt. I think Rorty’s response would be that if we can agree about claims like “'P is true iff P” then we have something less than a theory of truth worth promoting but enough to move ahead to the question of how we can be justified in believing that P.

 

[Leela]

But how is this any different than,

(1) If a set of ideas is a theory of truth, then it settles the dispute about what is true.
(4) None of the older philosophers succeeded in settling disputes about what is true.
(5) Therefore, older philosophers ideas are not theories of truth.

Why is (3) any more plausible than (5)? Both arguments are equally valid and sound.
If you claim that the only relevant difference between pragmatists and philosophers of old is that philosophers of old *intended *to offer theories of truth, while pragmatists did not, so what? Does one’s intention alone that his or her philosophical theory be a theory of truth, make one’s theory be the kind of theory that is about truth? I don’t think so, since the theory is going to stand apart from one’s intentions. So the question remains, “What does a theory of truth look like”?

Therefore, without telling us what a theory of truth consists in or looks like in the first place, you can’t reasonably insist that there is any plausible distinction between (3) and (5) at all.

The distinction between (3) and (5) is one that can only be made on pragmatic grounds. From your premises it may be perfectly reasonable to say that Rorty has a theory of truth, but for Rorty who is opperating based on different premises, he is right to argue that pragmatists are foolish to claim that they have a theory of truth. That’s why I just want to shrug and say, if that is all you mean by a theory of truth, then fine. But I don’t want to claim that I have a theory of truth to offer since that claim would make me a bad pragmatist. I would be promoting a difference that makes no difference. Unless I have a way to make a theory of truth fruitful there is no practical difference between having or not having such a theory.

Deflationary notions are fruitful enough to get us to the question “how can we be justified in believing that P?” but not so fruitful that they would cause embarrassment for a pragmatist claiming to wield one of these notions as a theory of truth. Pragmatists would be opening themselves up to the criticism that they who are supposed to be concerned with the meaning of beliefs as habits of action are promoting a theories that have little or no “cash-value” in practice.

From your previous post…

This is the correspondance theory of truth. Do you realize that?

truth=what is, in fact, the case.

All philosophers of old implicitly held the same thing as a presupposition in all their inquiries, but never really articulated the notion at all. Therefore, no philosopher ever *articulated *a theory of truth. So your accusation that philosophers of old articulated theories of truth is false.

If I ever asserted that philosphers have always articulated theories of truth I didn’t mean to say that or shouldn’t have said that. All I meant to say was that whenever the first philospher set out to give a systematic account of truth, I suppose this was done to try to have a way to settle disputes about what is true. I’m not saying that theories or truth that are fairly useless for settling disputes about what is true are not theories of truth. I’m saying that such theories of truth are lousy theories.

If we ever do find a good theory of truth, we’ll know it is good if it is useful for settling disputes. Do you have any other way that we could tell whether a theory of truth is any good?

Best,
Leela

 

[Syntax]

I would say that truth is a three-way relationship (or relational property as you say) between a sentence, the person saying it, and the context in which they say it. The sentence “I see a cat on a mat” is only true if the person saying it really is at that particular time and place seeing a cat on a mat.

I strongly recommend you try to understand the grammar of relations, first, before you try to make a case by using the term “relation.” We’ve been over this before. Unfortunately, your precision and clarity is incredibly lacking in this area, and I really don’t want to engage with it. But let me just say this.

First, we are getting ahead ourselves. I want to address difficulites with deflationary theory first.

Second, sentences are not propositions, rather, they express propositions.

Third, knowing the context and speaker-utterance certianly provide a necessary condtion for determining whether a sentence expresses a true or false proposition, but context and speaker-utterances are not constitutive members of the relational property truth. The reasons for this are many, but suffice it to say for now that sentence-tokens, sentence-types, propositions, are all very different things. Someone can express the same proposition by a different sentence-type and sentence-token. And someone can express different propostions by the same sentence-type. But by no means can someone express the same or different proposition by the same or different sentence-token.

For instance, the same sentence-type such as “I am here now” can be uttered by two different people in different contexts but mean different things because both utterances will express a different proposition–and both propositions will have the same truth value no matter who utters a different sentence-token of the same sentence-type which will express a different proposition in different contexts. Similarly, “the President of the United States is married” is one sentence-type that can express two different propositions depending on the context.

That still doesn’t answer what that realtionship consists in.

Fourth, Truth is an intrinsic property pertaining to propositions alone, and consits in the two-way relation between a proposition and a fact.

I just specified what truth consists in for the correspondence theorist.

If you say it consists in the correct correspondence, then you have to say what that correspondence must be like.

Why? Is it not enough to say that truth is a relational property of a proposition which consists in the proposition’s correspondence with a fact? This is all correspondence theory amounts to, Leela. Correspondence theory doesn’t specify what the correspondence “is like,” only that truth *consists in *this correspondence. It is very odd to say that certain facts make propositions true, but then deny that this correspondence between propositions and a fact is what the truth of propositions consists in.

How do we compare a sentence to a person and a situation to know whether or not they “correspond” correctly?

“How do we know?” is an epistemic question irrelevent to this thread.

Without an answer to this question correspondence theory is not much of a theory.

This is clearly false. You want to ask, “how do we know that our theory about truth is true”? In the end, it will come down to saying that our theory about truth is more likely true than other theories if we can explain how other theories are logically inconsistent, linguistically meaningless, or trivial. *Any *philosophical investigation would proceed accordingly. Your pragmatism has just already given up. But I don’t sympathize with your defeatism

 

[Syntax]

The distinction between (3) and (5) is one that can only be made on pragmatic grounds. From your premises it may be perfectly reasonable to say that Rorty has a theory of truth, but for Rorty who is opperating based on different premises, he is right to argue that pragmatists are foolish to claim that they have a theory of truth. That’s why I just want to shrug and say, if that is all you mean by a theory of truth, then fine. But I don’t want to claim that I have a theory of truth to offer since that claim would make me a bad pragmatist. I would be promoting a difference that makes no difference. Unless I have a way to make a theory of truth fruitful there is no practical difference between having or not having such a theory.

Deflationary notions are fruitful enough to get us to the question “how can we be justified in believing that P?” but not so fruitful that they would cause embarrassment for a pragmatist claiming to wield one of these notions as a theory of truth. Pragmatists would be opening themselves up to the criticism that they who are supposed to be concerned with the meaning of beliefs as habits of action are promoting a theories that have little or no “cash-value” in practice.

If I ever asserted that philosphers have always articulated theories of truth I didn’t mean to say that or shouldn’t have said that. All I meant to say was that whenever the first philospher set out to give a systematic account of truth, I suppose this was done to try to have a way to settle disputes about what is true. I’m not saying that theories or truth that are fairly useless for settling disputes about what is true are not theories of truth. I’m saying that such theories of truth are lousy theories.

If we ever do find a good theory of truth, we’ll know it is good if it is useful for settling disputes. Do you have any other way that we could tell whether a theory of truth is any good?

Best,
Leela

Don’t carry my quotes from the pragmatism thread over here into the deflationary thread! I will start ignoring you if you contine to discuss pragmatism here. Do you have trouble following the rules of the OP??

 

[Syntax]

The distinction between (3) and (5) is one that can only be made on pragmatic grounds. From your premises it may be perfectly reasonable to say that Rorty has a theory of truth, but for Rorty who is opperating based on different premises, he is right to argue that pragmatists are foolish to claim that they have a theory of truth. That’s why I just want to shrug and say, if that is all you mean by a theory of truth, then fine. But I don’t want to claim that I have a theory of truth to offer since that claim would make me a bad pragmatist. I would be promoting a difference that makes no difference. Unless I have a way to make a theory of truth fruitful there is no practical difference between having or not having such a theory.

You missed the entire point of this illustration (which Betterave understood completely). It was designed to show that you don’t know what you are talking about when you accuse past philosophers of constructing theories of truth because you can’t give an example from the past of what a theory of truth, from Plato for instance, looks like. So your distinction between (3) and (5) is so far moot. Period.

If I ever asserted that philosphers have always articulated theories of truth I didn’t mean to say that or shouldn’t have said that. All I meant to say was that whenever the first philospher set out to give a systematic account of truth, I suppose this was done to try to have a way to settle disputes about what is true.

Oh my word!! Then give an example of one and tell us why it failed! You are going around in circles!

I’m not saying that theories or truth that are fairly useless for settling disputes about what is true are not theories of truth. I’m saying that such theories of truth are lousy theories.

You continue to assume that the function of a theory of truth is to help settle disputes about what is true. No, this is not its function. It’s function is solely to

(1) specify the linguistic meaning of truth.
(2) demonstrate what truth consists in.
(3) to clean up linguistic/logical messes made by people like you and Rorty.

If we ever do find a good theory of truth, we’ll know it is good if it is useful for settling disputes. Do you have any other way that we could tell whether a theory of truth is any good?

A theory of truth will settle disputes about what truth consists in, but it will **not **settle disputes about ***which *statements that purport to be about the world are true–only **theories of justification ** can resolve disputes about what is true. Why do you continue to fail to make this distinction? Do you think a theory of truth is identical to a theory about the world?? You’re wrong.

 

[Betterave]

But I don’t want to claim that I have a theory of truth to offer since that claim would make me a bad pragmatist.

…and you’re worried the pragmatism police are going to come and spank you? “Bad pragmatist!” (Sorry!) Does this count as pragmatic justification?

I would be promoting a difference that makes no difference. Unless I have a way to make a theory of truth fruitful there is no practical difference between having or not having such a theory.

What is the ‘cash value’ of your saying things that are false in order to be a good pragmatist? We’re back at the question: Why pragmatism? If it has no cash-value, the pragmatist should give up on pragmatism.

Suppose we overlooked your false claim that you have no ‘theory of truth’ (i.e., ‘belief about what truth is,’ i.e., ‘habits of action involving claims you make about the abstract notion of “truth”’) - still, you certainly have a (‘pragmatistic’) ‘theory of theories of truth’… Will you admit that? We already know from your stated ‘theory of theories of truth’ what you think a ‘theory of truth’ is supposed to do… Now what do you suppose a ‘theory of theories of truth’ is supposed to do?